The Republican National Committee and White House communications staff produce what’s known by some in the White House as the “Propaganda Document” for President Donald Trump twice a day, Vice News reported Tuesday.
The documents are exclusively composed of positive media coverage. Citing three unnamed current and former White House officials, Vice News described them:
[T]he folders are filled with screenshots of positive cable news chyrons (those lower-third headlines and crawls), admiring tweets, transcripts of fawning TV interviews, praise-filled news stories, and sometimes just pictures of Trump on TV looking powerful.
Citing unnamed White House sources, Vice News reported that Trump was delivered the documents at around 9:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. daily. Though the publication noted that the documents had come to be delivered less frequently “and more typically after public events” after the departure of ousted communications director Sean Spicer and chief of staff Reince Priebus, according to unnamed sources.
According to Vice News, the documents follow much the same pathway as political communications-related materials in other recent presidencies — starting with information monitoring at the Republican National Committee in the early morning, and progressing through the White House communications staff and onto the President’s desk.
The difference, of course, is that purely positive information would seem to serve little purpose for the White House other than boosting the President’s mood.
“Maybe it’s good for the country that the president is in a good mood in the morning,” an unnamed former RNC official told Vice News.
An unnamed White House official told Vice News the only feedback the communications shop had ever gotten regarding the document was: “It needs to be more fucking positive.”
Yet another source said the document could have been an effort from Priebus and Spicer to prove that their efforts were resulting in positive coverage.
Spicer told Vice News that “While I won’t comment on materials we share with the president, this is not accurate on several levels,” but wouldn’t specify any inaccuracies.
Neither White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders nor Deputy RNC Rapid Response Director Steve Guest responded to TPM’s request for comment.
